Prayers

Thank you to all who came to our wonderful dance. I intend to write more soon, but I wanted to get the prayers that I recited on the blog as several have asked for them.
May all beings be filled with joy and peace.
May all beings everywhere,
The strong and the weak,
The great and the small,
The mean and the powerful,
The short and the long,
the subtle and the gross:
May all beings everywhere,
Seen and unseen,
Dwelling far off or nearby,
Being or waiting to become:
May all be filled with lasting joy.
Let no one deceive another,
Let no one anywhere despise another,
Let no one out of anger or resentment
Wish suffering on anyone at all.
Just as a mother with her own life
Protects her child, her only child, from harm,
So within yourself let grow
A boundless love for all creatures.
Let your love flow outward through the universe,
To its height, its depth, its broad extent,
A limitless love, without hatred or enmity.
Then as you stand or walk,
Sit or lie down,
As long as you are awake,
Strive for this with a one-pointed mind;
Your life will bring heaven to earth.
Sutta Nipata
Buddha's Discourse on Good Will

By the power and the truth of this practice,
may all beings have happiness, and the causes of happiness.
May all be free from sorrow, and the causes of sorrow.
May all never be separated from the sacred happiness
which is sorrowless.
And may all live in equanimity,
without too much attachment and too much aversion,
And live believing in the equality of all that lives.

There you go...
JJ

Acupuncture

As part of my pain management program, due to my three compression fractures in my spine, my nurse practitioner decided that I would benefit from acupuncture. Now most people I meet say "Well, you should be into this stuff because of your Buddhism stuff, right?" And I say, "um, actually no, I am quite skeptical about this stuff." Now, granted acupuncture is nothing like crystals or pyramid therapy or something like that. It has a long history and is accepted as a valid form of treatment by most of the top hospitals in the US. Knowing this, I said yeah I'll try it.

I went to the first session, not expecting too much, afterall I have been in pain of some kind for the last two years. So , I laid down and they started putting the needles into my ear, head, back and hand. The session lasted 20 minutes and for those 20 minutes I was completely pain free. It was amazing! Granted the rest of the day and next the pain increased, but since I have been using less pain medicine and my pain has decreased substantially. I truly believe that this is due to the acupuncture treatments. If you are in pain and are thinking about trying, do it is awesome.

That's all I got to say and I hope you have a lovely day.

Love, JJ

Its been a long time...

What is wrong with me...this is supposed to be a journal for me and a peephole for you all into this crazy journey I am on and I have been silent for some time now. I really have no excuse so I will only say sorry. I say sorry as much to myself as I do to you. Well, I will try to tell you some of what has been going.

In the last month, we have been frantically trying to get this dance together...thank you to all that are helping...it should a very fun time. The music is going to be great...the food beautifully prepared by my favorite chef (besides Alton Brown, of course), my brother Jason, is going to be awesome. If you are on the fence about coming...take a chance and go for it...I promise you will not regret it. Danceing your heart out to the old stuff will be worth it alone...hell the food is worth the price. Come on now....meet me there.
I have been feeling pretty good, but a few weeks ago I tried to pick up a box that I had no business trying to pick up. You see, when you spend so much time in the hospital, one loses a lot of muscle and hence strength...So, I picked up this box and hurt my back. Well I thought I just pulled a muscle...no big deal, right...well it kept hurting and a few weeks later I asked my doctor if I could see the pain clinic. I went there and they took an X-ray of my spine and it turns out I had been walking about with three compression fractures in my vertebrae. Well, I am now on the proper pain meds and I have a lovely $2500 back brace called a TLSO for the parts of the back it covers, the Thoracic, Lumbar and Sacral vertebrae. Here is a picture of it: [NOTE: I have a picture of it, but I cannot find my camera base to put it online, ugh...I will put it on when I find the base.] Luckily I do not have to wear it to bed, but for those of you who come to the dance you will get to see it live and in person. Unfortunately, it is going to seriously hamper my moves on the dance floor.
Other than that Sara and I have been seriously enjoying our time together at our apartment. It is so nice to be able to snuggle on the couch and watch bad TV. And good movies.
Well, that is about it. I will try try try try to write more and more often.

I love you all and I hope this and tomorrows entry will pull some of ya back to my blog.

Love,
JJ